Ngo Statement: Pakistan

NGO STATEMENT: PAKISTAN

Presented at the 38th Session of CEDAW Committee

United Nations: 21 May 2007

(on the occasion of hearing of Pakistan’s Country Report)

Thank you Madam Chair,

I am speaking on behalf of the representatives of five leading NGOs present here, and also on behalf of several other NGOs and committed activists at home, who have been struggling for gender equality, justice and peace in Pakistan for the last several decades.

We would like to bring to your attention the following critical issues.

Institutional Mechanisms (policy and enforcement):

The Ministry of Women’s Development, the national machinery on women in Pakistan, is marginalized within the national bureaucracy. It ostensibly has a policy-making role, but its mandate is extremely restrictive at present. It has no influence in carrying out it its legislative agenda through the Parliament; all positive provisions in the Ministry’s initial draft bills for Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2004 (relating to ‘honour’ killings) and Protection of Women Act, 2006 (amendments in the Hudood Ordinances), were dropped or drastically changed by the law ministry and later by the federal cabinet.
The ministry is extremely constrained both in financial and human resources; it lacks will as well as capacity to follow-up and implement the National Plan of Action, 1998, the National Policy for Advancement and Empowerment of Women, 2002, and the CEDAW. It also has patriarchal environment and preferences – several key positions in the ministry are held by men from civil service and retired military men, who have no track record of any contribution to women’s cause.
The National Commission on the Status of Women, with a watchdog role, does not enjoy independence and/or any influence to make it incumbent upon the government to respond to its recommendations on major issues, e.g. for the repeal of the Hudood Ordinances in 2003; amendment in the Citizenship Act and legislation recommended on home-based women workers. The NCSW also lack resources and capacity to perform its duties under its mandated constitutional role.
There does not exist any mechanism to promote cross-sectoral, inter-ministerial ownership and an enabling environment for implementing and monitoring the provisions of CEDAW.
The government is not clear about the timeframe for further action to bring about equality of law and withdraw its general declaration on CEDAW; neither does it have any inclination or time-line in mind for the ratification of the Option Protocol on CEDAW.
The planning and mechanisms do not exist to collect gender disaggregated data in all social and economic sectors to change operational definitions of ‘work’ and economic productivity to accurately assess women’s economic contributions in labour force; no steps have also been taken to maintain gender disaggregated data of voter turn-out of women to gauge the level of their participation in political and electoral processes.

Legal Framework (laws and customary practices):

There exist a number of laws and legal provisions discriminatory to women, undermining the equality of their legal status in three types of laws (Islamic laws, such as the Hudood Ordinances, Law of Evidence and Qisas and Diyat provisions of the PPC[1]; the common law, such as the PPC and; the customary law practiced by the parallel legal and quasi-legal systems in rural areas, such as panchayats and jirgas). Some of these are discussed here briefly:

The Citizenship Act, 1951, continues to harbour discrimination towards female citizens, whose foreign spouses are not entitled to Pakistani citizenship.
The Law of Evidence, 1984, is discriminatory to women in two respects. Firstly, it has left it to the courts to decide the competence of a witness in accordance with the qualifications prescribed by the injunctions of Islam and, secondly, it has halved the value of women’s testimony in the case of financial transactions, if these are reduced to writing.
The age of adulthood for girls has been defined differently in various laws. It is still discriminatory in the Hudood Ordinances where the adult culpability starts at 18 for males and 16 or puberty for females. This provision of puberty conflicts with other laws such as the Child Marriage Restraint Act and the Majority Act which disregard puberty. This is also in conflict with the Child Rights Convention to which Pakistan is a State Party.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2004 (relating to ‘honour’ killings) has failed to remove main legal lacunas responsible for ‘honour’ crimes, i.e. the perpetrators still enjoy immunity through the waiver of retribution (qisas) and/or payment of compensation (diyat) by the heirs (wali) who areusually common descendant in the family, where most of the ‘honour’ crimes are committed.
The Protection of Women Act, 2006, has amended two of the Hudood Ordinances (the Zina and Qazf Ordinances) with some positive amendments, such as shifting the offence of rape from the Hudood Ordinances to Pakistan Penal Code, where it could be proved through any circumstantial evidence. However, the law has not touched the two other Hudood Ordinances (the offences of property and drinking) and has also failed to remove several discriminatory provisions in the ordinances it amended. These are: i) the age of adulthoodin the Zina Ordinance remains “18 years for a male or 16 years for a female or puberty”; ii) testimony of female and non-Muslim citizens remains absent. This means that women cannot be eye-witnesses in the cases of zina (fornication) liable to Hadd, and non-Muslims can only be witnesses if the accused is non-Muslim; iii) non-Muslim cannot be presiding officer of the court if the accused is Muslim and; iv) the Hudood Ordinances are applicable on religious minorities which is a discrimination on the basis of religion.
The proposed ‘Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Bill, 2006, is a private members bill moved in the National Assembly by the head of the ruling party, seeking to eliminate anti-women customary practices. This is an extremely weak piece of legislation, mitigating already available punishments for some offences, for example, the three to ten years rigorous imprisonment for settling disputes by marrying off girls and women in the existing provision (310A) in the PPC has been lowered to upto three years imprisonment in the proposed bill.
The Human Trafficking Ordinance, 2002, deals with external human smuggling only, and has failed to address the issue of internal trafficking of women particularly carried under the cover of customary practice of bride price and its link with the external trafficking of women.
Inadequate registration of births and marriages leads families to marry off under age daughters despite legal prohibitions against child marriages.
There do not exist any initiatives or mechanisms to review and revise the personal laws of religious minorities to ensure women’s legal rights.

Representation of women (political/legislative, administrative and judicial)

Reservation of seats for women (33 percent at the local level and 17 percent for the national and provincial legislatures)is encouraging, however, the modality for electing women for the national and provincial legislatures is through PR system (party lists). This system deprives women of the opportunity of dealing directly with the electorate and developing their own constituencies. The nomination system also allows complete control over selection to political party leadership, opening the door to nepotism on the basis of relationship or influence rather than merit.
There is also a gender imbalance of 21% in the possession of national identity card (NIC). NIC is a requirement for voting and all government schemes. Almost half of all Pakistani women are deprived of their right to vote and of access to other schemes and resources.
The increase in women’s share in public services to 10% has not been implemented as yet; there had been some public pronouncements at the high level about it, but there had been no cabinet approval, legislative action or notification issued in this regard so far.
There had been no appointments of women as judges of the higher courts since 1994; all women appointed then have already retired; recently, some appointments had been made at the lower judiciary level recently.

Violence against Women (policy framework and enforcement):

There is no holistic and independent policy for elimination of VAW and the issue is not recognized by the government as a ‘national priority issue of public safety’.

There is no legislation on ‘domestic violence’ and ‘sexual harassment’ defining them as criminal offences; (some private members bills for ending domestic violence and customary practices have been moved in the National Assembly recently; these should be encouraged, however, since, there are a number of serious loopholes in theses bills, they must be debated and discussed with all the concerned stakeholders, particularly women’s rights groups and legal experts).
There had been no let up in incidents of VAW (Pakistan Responses: para 7; page 4) in recent years despite the enactment of a law relating to ‘honour’ killings; a woman provincial minister was murdered and there were several cases of rape/gang rape recently; the government has not taken no concrete measures to check this rising menace as perpetrators continue to enjoy complete impunity; the impact of the more recently enacted law (Protection of Women Act, 2006) is yet to be seen:
The establishment and performance of high level ministerial committees (Pakistan Responses: paras 21 & 22; pages 7 & 8), such as Media Awareness Campaign Committee comprising federal minister and Members of Parliament to launch media awareness campaign; Federal Cabinet Committee for monitoring and proper follow-up of violence cases and; a National Committee on prevention of Violence against Women, headed by the interior minister, are not known to even informed sections of society.
The inadequate number of shelter homes and women’s police stations with limited human and financial resources provide negligible service delivery to survivors of violence against women; only 17 of the 25 Women Crisis Centers are operational in a country of 110 districts offering temporary relief with meager resources, and without any widely publicized helpline known to public.
The existence of Gender Crime Cell at the National Police Bureau (Pakistan Responses: para 21; page 7) in the federal capital Islamabad is little known to public even in the city it is based; it is extremely constrained by human resources and the details of how many reports it had received and disposed of were never divulged to public.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:

We call upon the Government of Pakistan to:

Show commitment to uphold State obligations under CEDAW; create mechanisms to ensure that effective quantitative and qualitative monitoring mechanisms are in place to review progress on CEDAW; withdraw general declaration on CEDAW and ratify the Optional Protocol;
Ensure that appropriate budgetary allocations are made to implement the NPA, National Policy and all women’s development programmes; increase budget allocations and prevent ADP budget cuts on the social sector; allocate specific budgetary resources to all on line ministries/departments for interventions benefiting women and girls;
Strengthen the national machineries and institutional structures and mechanisms for women’s development at the federal, provincial and district levels by renewing their mandate and enhancing their human and financial resources;
Repeal all discriminatory laws, including the Hudood Ordinances and provisions in the Citizenship Act, Law of Evidence, Qisas and Diyat and; eliminate contradictory provisions in law regarding the legal age of children/adulthood in accordance with the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Women, 1997 and the CRC;
Eliminate all harmful customary practices like ‘honour’ killings, vani, swara etc. and; abolish all parallel legal and quasi-legal systems to ensure a uniform, integrated judicial system in the country, including the abolition of the Federal Shariat Court;
Reform all personal status laws to ensure equality of status, as well as women’s financial security and rights in accordance with current socio-economic realities and to expedite the process of justice in the family courts and; review and revise the personal laws of religious minorities to ensure women’s legal rights.
Enhance the proportion of representation of women to 33% in the national and provincial legislatures and; ensure that elections to reserved seats are direct and constituency-based and; ensure that strict and prompt action under the law is taken against all those who seek to restrain or disallow women from exercising their right of franchise and contesting elections;
Ensure the implementation of 10% quota for women in public services and; ensure effective representation of women in all key policy/decision-making bodies and forums, including the Election Commission, Law Commission, economic/planning sector bodies, superior judiciary, advisory task forces etc.;
Enact special legislation on domestic violence, sexual harassment and child sexual abuse, and ensure that all cases of domestic violence against women are registered and prosecuted and; enact legislation to ensure proper investigation in women’s burn cases;
Amend laws relating to prostitution and trafficking of women, recognizing women as victims of these practices, and undertake measures to rehabilitate or repatriate victims;
Establish support structures (shelters, crisis centres, legal aid and counseling centres, burn units) with effective support and referral systems as well as a 24-hour help-line at district level all over the country for female victims of violence;
Compile and maintain gender disaggregated data in all social, political and economic sectors, particularly on women’s labour force participation and; crate a national database on women’s employment.

Presented on behalf of NGOs:

Aurat Foundation, Shirkat Gah, NET, Films d’Art, National Commission for Justice and Peace.

[1]Pakistan Penal Code